The push starts for plain packaging of fast food

AOL reports:

Aaron Shultz, an Australian health campaigner, is calling for plain packaging featuring health warnings for junk food. He has posted a picture on Facebook of what he believes the packaging could look like – dropping the branding in favour of a picture reminding people of the price they could pay for a junk food habit.

Shultz is a health campaigner, who runs an organisation called Game Changer. It has a broader aim: to halt the promotion of alcohol, junk food and gambling through sport. He argues that by associating sport with these unhealthy brands, it normalises junk food, and contributes to the growing obesity problem in Australia.

Why not just have the Government decide what food is acceptable to buy?

The expansion of plain packaging beyond tobacco products has been something that analysts have talked about since plain packets were first proposed. An Adam Smith Institute report by Christopher Snowdon recently claimed: “The extension of plain packaging to other products is not just possible, it is highly likely.” He added: “What happens to tobacco today tends to happen to other ‘unhealthy’ products tomorrow.” He cited sin taxes, advertising bans and health warnings as proof that “we can be confident that the temperance lobby and the diet police will fight for it to happen with plain packaging.” Snowdon is a pro-smoking author and journalist, so the idea of extending plain packaging brings him concern, but it will cheer health campaigners.

This is indeed the problem. One can have a view that due to its nature, tobacco should have all these additional regulations. But the problem is these campaigners then try to expand these regulations to everything else they disagree with. It never just stops at tobacco.